What your computer reports about itself
A computer answers questions about itself all day long: what display is attached, what processor is inside, which networks are within reach. This site walks through those answers one part at a time, and shows who is listening — a page in a browser, a program installed on the system — and what a virtual machine says in the same place instead.
What this site is
A tour, not a catalogue. Each stop takes one part of an ordinary computer — the display it reports, the tables that describe its make and model, the security chip, the processor, the receiver that knows where it is, the wired adapter, the wireless one — and asks the same four questions of it. What does the part report about itself? What does a website see through the browser? What does installed software read through the operating system? And what does a virtual machine answer in the same place, and why does that answer stand out? Every stop is an ordinary page: it reads without scripts, it can be linked to on its own, and it names the stop that follows.
Who is reading
There are two readers, and they are not shown the same thing. A page in a browser is given a summary — enough to lay out a document, pick a video format and choose a font size, and no more. It is not handed serial numbers, and not handed a value that names one computer exactly for as long as it runs. A program installed on the system asks the operating system directly and receives the fields themselves, the identifying ones included. Neither reader is doing anything unusual; both are doing what they were built to do. The distance between their two answers is the subject of this tour.
Why the whole is the point
No single value identifies a computer. A display of a common size, a processor of a common family, a network adapter from a maker who sold millions of them — each on its own says almost nothing. Judgement comes from the combination: whether the parts together describe a computer that could exist, whether they agree with one another, and whether they agree with what the same computer said a moment ago. A set of individually ordinary answers can still be a set no real computer would ever give. Showing that is what each stop is built to do.